You do narrow grip lat pulldowns on a machine at a gym? Do you do these instead of or in addition to pullups? In what way do you see them as superior to narrow grip pullups?

I didn't see pull-ups on the other list -- but different strokes for different folks. I just like the motion of cables or machines. Maybe when I get stronger I'll play with bodyweight pull ups.

I do a weight machine pull-downs at the work gym "Body by Design" style -- very slow on Mondays and normal speed cable pulls at home on Thursdays. I can't imagine doing body pull-ups slowly and don;t have a pull-up bar at home.

I didn't see pull-ups on the other list -- but different strokes for different folks. I just like the motion of cables or machines. Maybe when I get stronger I'll play with bodyweight pull ups.

I do a weight machine pull-downs at the work gym "Body by Design" style -- very slow on Mondays and normal speed cable pulls at home on Thursdays. I can't imagine doing body pull-ups slowly and don;t have a pull-up bar at home.

I don't belong to a gym, and I do have a pullup bar at home. Back when I did belong to a gym a decade or more back, I used to do heavy pulldowns, but never felt like I was getting much out of them.

Thats only true if all you are doing are things like the standard push up. Initially you'll make strength gains but eventually they will level off and if all you do is the same exercise but just add reps you'll be building more endurance than strength. The key to building strength with bodyweight exercises is to increase the difficulty which most people don't seem to know how to do so they just add reps and then conclude that "You can only go so far with body weight exercises."

Go look at Overcoming Gravity by Steven Low and then try to say that you can't build some serious strength with bodyweight exercises.

I do a weight machine pull-downs at the work gym "Body by Design" style -- very slow on Mondays and normal speed cable pulls at home on Thursdays. I can't imagine doing body pull-ups slowly and don;t have a pull-up bar at home.

just to comment on this. i do narrow grip lat pulldowns to warm up for doing chin ups. they feel to me to be a different exercise almost. i dont have a pull up bar at home but i use things i find on my travels like soccer goals where i pick the kids up from school, bars in the kids playground, a beam in the roof of my lean to, tree branches etc.